Even in Austria, David Duke is embarrassing: James Gill

A hundred German police swoop, check everyone's papers, order a meeting cancelled and arrest an enemy of the state. Nobody compares them to Nazis, though. In this crowd, that would be a compliment.

Vahid Salemi, The Associated PressDavid Duke, left, listens to a speech during a conference on the Holocaust in December 2006 in Tehran, Iran.

Following his arrest in Cologne last week, David Duke, who has been known to celebrate Hitler's birthday, complained bitterly about heavy-handed cops. Duke does not have a strong sense of irony.

He has no shame, either. As soon as he was released, he launched yet another online appeal for money as he vowed to stay in Germany and continue his noble fight against repression and injustice. He was entitled to ask for generosity, even sacrifice, he wrote, because he would be dreading the midnight knock on the door of his lonely room, while everyone else enjoyed the festive season. Then, of course, he fled across the border.

He must have been feeling the pinch, for this had every appearance of a put-up job to provide a fresh pretext to extract money from supporters of the Aryan cause. No doubt it flowed in, even though Duke was long ago exposed as a scammer and sent to prison. He could always come up with a spurious tale of woe to touch tender hearts.

He must have expected the authorities to intervene when he arranged to deliver his white supremacist spiel at a rented room in a restaurant, because he had been admitted to Germany only for purposes of travelling through it. He had no legal right to linger because an exclusion order issued by Switzerland applies also in Germany under what is known as the Schengen treaty.

Although Austria is also a Schengen signatory, Duke has been living openly since 2009 in the picturesque resort Zell am See, according to local bloggers and the German newspaper, Die Welt. The authorities there are evidently somewhat lax.

The Germans can be relied upon for due diligence, however, and Duke was bound to wind up in jail for a few hours when he set off for the hall where some 60 native neo-Nazis were gathering. He complains on his website of "Communist-style thuggishness to suppress the right-wing," and deny him the right to deliver his message of "heritage and freedom."

Although Duke was arrested merely because he was in Germany illegally, the exclusion order was issued in the first place because he is a professional Nazi and a serial violator of European laws against Holocaust denial in his books and speeches. He is quite right when he says the German authorities just want to shut him up. And, unencumbered by a First Amendment, they always will. That freedom of speech should not extend to denying the crimes of the Third Reich seems a wise precaution over there.

Duke has railed against German laws before, albeit not the ones that applied under Hitler. He has, for instance, described Ernst Zuendel, who was deported from Canada in 2005 to do five years in Germany for Holocaust denial, as a "political prisoner." That is just how Duke wants to be regarded himself, so that the cash donations will roll in.

Being kicked out of European countries is old hat to Duke. The British Home Secretary ordered him out more than 30 years ago, when he had himself photographed in his Ku Klux Klan robes outside the Houses of Parliament and Scotland Yard. After finding himself unwelcome in Switzerland, he was booted out of the Czech Republic two years ago only to find haven in Austria, for all that Holocaust denial is against the law there too.

Duke says he might get into the presidential race, but running off to Europe is an eccentric way to mount a campaign, and he is clearly washed up politically. He remains an embarrassment to Louisiana, however. Last week Die Welt was reminding its readers that he went to LSU and got elected to the state Legislature.

He remains an accomplished panhandler. His supporters may rest assured that, while they enjoy the festive season, he will be counting their money in Zell am See without any fear of a midnight knock on the door.